


Endurance

by thyandra



Series: Two-years Anniversary Fanfiction Giveaway [2]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul, Tokyo Ghoul:re
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Kidnapping, Psychological Torture, Rated M for Emotional Manipulation, Sensory Deprivation, Set after ch. 136, Torture, the author doesn't approve of anything depicted here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 15:42:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9391919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thyandra/pseuds/thyandra
Summary: Hide is kidnapped by Aogiri after he gets out of the sewers and made into Eto's new toy.It's a test of endurance, he thinks. As long as he fights back he won't break that easily. Right?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry. To be fair, I didn't plan for this fic to be so dark. But halfway through it, it got a life of its own and it was impossible for me to stop. It's psychological horror, kids. Don't try it at home.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first time Hide wakes up after his blackout, a fever coursing through his body, he finds he’s in an unfamiliar room. He asks the ceiling where he is, and the ceiling giggles. His own voice sounds groggy, as though he’s not been using it for a long time. He blinks, once, twice, to try and clear the fog that is in his head, and asks for a glass of water. **  
**

He falls in a feverish and perturbed sleep again before anyone can fulfill that request.

 

***

 

After that, he starts waking up more and more, and each time he catches a glimpse of white bandages, before a glass is pressed to his avid lips, making him drink. The cool water feels amazing down his throat, and he always asks for more. He can’t get enough. Those tiny, bandaged hands never come back after the first glass, though, and after a while Hide learns to appreciate what little is given to him. He doesn’t want for his saviour to stop altogether.

He’s starting to regain lucidity, and after what feels like hours, days– hell, maybe months, he thinks he understands the cause of his predicament. The wound on his arm with Kaneki’s teeth imprinted in blood on his skin must have gotten infected.

Exhaustion grips his tired limbs once again, but not before a distant thought of “I’m glad I survived” can be formed in his hazy mind.

 

***

 

In his dreams, there’s always a little child crying. Their face is covered by their tiny, trembling arms, as they hug their knees to their chest, so Dream-Hide can’t know for sure who the kid is supposed to be. The only thing he knows about them is the extent of their sorrow. Hide hates it.

He can’t stand all the pain he can hear in those desperate wails, and he’s tired of feeling powerless, just staring at them from a distance, and so he always crosses the unending distance to try and approach the child to calm them down.

The dream always dissolves into nothingness before he gets a chance to.

 

***

 

He’s lost count of how many times he’s woken up to that dusty ceiling, but the next time he does, it’s with a lucidity he’s never before possessed.

“Where am I?” he groggily asks, and his throat feels scratchy, but this time he doesn’t ask for a glass of water. Even without turning, he can feel the loaded look of an intent pair of eyes on himself. No answer comes but another giggle, and he doesn’t repeat the question. It was answer enough.

“You’re awake,” the owner of the other voice in the room instead observes to no one in particular. They sound excited by this news.

“Why did you bring me here?” Hide tiredly asks next. _For what purpose did you save my life_ , is what he means.

The figure sitting somewhere to his right stands up with a rustle of fabric, and moves closer. Their steps are almost imperceptible and fast, awfully fast, and Hide would be caught off guard by their sudden close proximity, if he hadn’t gotten an idea of who exactly the other occupant of the room was.

“Why does a child always ask for new toys, ignoring their old ones?” the bandaged ghoul asks with something akin to mirth, but which feels immensely darker. Their hands come to cup his face, making him look at their covered face. Basking in their dominance, looking down on him.

Hide doesn’t reply, and instead gives them an indecipherable look, trying to come to his own conclusion. He knows that’s his only weapon here, his perceptiveness. And so he keeps quiet, trying not to give out anything, because every instinct he’s always possessed is urging him to _run_ the longer he stares at those empty, merciless eyes.

He’s never been more afraid in his whole life.

“Because they get bored of playing the same game over and over,” the ghoul chirps, brushing one thumb over the skin under his right eye and then releasing him. Even without seeing their face, Hide can tell that they’re smiling, under all those bandages. He tries not to think of why.

The ghoul takes a few steps away, regarding him with their hands clasped together behind their back. They giggle again. “I hope this toy won’t break too soon,” they muse ominously, in sharp contrast with the childish tilt of their head. “I would hate to toss it in the trash with the rest.”

Hide is left to wonder whatever that meant, as the ghoul leaves the room with a skip to their step.

Then comes the hunger.

 

***

 

The ghoul doesn’t come back to visit for a long while, and Hide is starting to feel antsy the longer these four white walls keep staring back at him, with nothing else to keep his mind occupied but the pangs of a maddening hunger that shake him to his very core.

He’s long since realized this isn’t normal human hunger, and he hates the direction his thoughts have brought him to, because he knows that thinking about _him_ and how he suffered from the same fate will only make this impossibly worse. He can’t help it. And so he thinks, and thinks and thinks, and the longer he spends in that little, suffocating room, the more his memories become infested by regret, by anger, by powerlessness.

He hates it.

But even more than that, he loathes that hunger that claws at his stomach mercilessly, like a monster trying to fight their way out, and he hates that his mind supplies him with pictures of Kaneki. He hates it, because his hunger feeds on that, too, feasting on twisted memories of the smell of succulent blood filling his nostrils, of soft, pliant bellies that wouldn’t resist his teeth, of snapping tendons in between bites, of red cheeks flushed with indignation that would taste amazing in his avid mouth, or of eyes widening with a rightful fear, and how gummy they would feel on his tongue…

One day he snaps out of that twisted fantasy with his jaw wet with saliva, and finds that he’s not alone in his solitary room.

The ghoul sits in a corner, observing him, and Hide takes a moment to compose himself, feeling self-conscious. It’s not the knowledge of having been caught at his lowest that makes him so uncomfortable. He knows that all ghouls alike must know how it feels like not to be in control of themselves and their minds, and how dehumanizing it is to forget who you are in the haze of the instinct of survival.

He wipes at his chin and avoids looking at his companion. What makes him feel self-conscious is the weight of another set of observant - if emotionless - eyes trained on himself, after having spent so long by himself in that tiny cell. He’s no longer used to masking his feelings under a fake smile. He does so anyway, resisting the urge to hug his knees to his chest, knowing it will expose his thoughts even more to the ghoul’s perceptive eyes.

“Hi,” he greets. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, miss Takatsuki.”

It doesn’t help that he still feels his stomach rumbling, as if reacting to the real presence of _food_ so close to his touch. He’d only need to reach an arm forward and he’d be touching that meat, bringing it to his lips and sating the monster in his belly, if only for a little while.

It also doesn’t help that the ghoul sitting in front of him, a smile on her plush, rosy lips, is almost completely naked. Every single one of his senses is on edge, his muscles tight with restraint, struggling to hold himself back. He knows this is a test. He knows this is a _game_. But the realization doesn’t make it any easier for him.

The ghoul, Takatsuki Sen, shifts so that she’s resting her arms on her knees, watching him and humming to herself. Her smell tingles Hide’s nostrils, but he forces his body into a relaxed stance, his expression unreadable.

He knows as well as he knows himself, that she can still read the truth on his face. She _knows_ that he only wants for his hunger to stop tormenting him. She knows he only wants to sate it and be done with it. He understands that she’s waited this long to visit for this very same reason. He’s fighting a losing battle, but he’s determined not to let the odds against him have the better of him.

“You haven’t asked, yet,” she observes, her cheek casually squished against her forearm.

Hide only looks at her, his eyes calculating.

_She only wants to prove a point, doesn’t she? She’s testing my endurance. I have a feeling she’s just waiting for the right chance to push me against Kaneki and enjoy the show._

“I would give it to you, if only you asked,” she smiles. “I don’t enjoy seeing you suffer like this.”

But then why making her move now?

He had underestimated Aogiri’s power. He’d assumed they wouldn’t come after him if he kept a low profile, and maybe they would have, had Takatsuki not been a part of the organization.

He’d made a misstep, not trusting that variable even after he’d sensed she was a ghoul, and exposed his interests so blindly in front of her. He’d been fooled by her kind smile as she signed that one autograph.

Still, the timing felt wrong. Why leaving him to his own devices for so long? Maybe she didn’t perceive him as a threat?

Then why capturing him now?

Takatsuki reaches forward until her hands are on either side of his face. “I can hear the sound of your thoughts whirring,” she purrs, close to his ear, before giving it an experimental lick. “I like that. You have a pretty strong self control, don’t you?”

She giggles when Hide shivers under her touch, unable to suppress the disgust and the terror brought by her proximity alone.

“That makes you the perfect candidate for my gift,” she thrills, still uncomfortably close, her tiny hands surprisingly strong against his protests even with his newfound ghoul strength. An ominous ripping sound is the only warning he gets, before a single monstrous appendage with hundreds of tiny branches erupts from her small frame. Hide’s vision is suddenly filled with its expanding, horrifying majesty.

Words don’t come, as his mind spins with endless plans of escape, none of which is realistic enough to guarantee his survival.

Takatsuki caresses one of its extremities with a soft touch, smiling to herself. “A kagune’s size is determined by the quality and quantity of your RC cells. And a kagune’s shape is determined by your creativity and intelligence,” she explains, then shifts her hand to brush her fingers against Hide’s parted lips. “Think of what we could do with this power,” she chirps, right before willing one end of kagune into a sharp point and thrusting it into Hide’s lower belly, passing him from side to side.

The motion is so rapid and brutal that for a few moments Hide doesn’t even register it.

Then the pain hits him full force, so intense and overwhelming that it makes his vision wobble and his knees give out. He coughs blood and crumbles in himself like a piece of parchment, gaping.

“Now, now,” she soothes as he reels and spasms from pain, holding him upright by his shoulders. “The booboo is going to go away really soon, I promise.” One of her hands comes to card through his hair, massaging his scalp. She sheds her kagune and it shrinks to merge with the half of it still impaling Hide side to side, sending a new wave of nausea through his body and making his vision wobble and little spots appear behind his eyelids, as it pushes him against the wall and pins him there in a twisted copy of a chain made entirely of pulsing tissue.

Hide feels worn out when he next takes a shuddering breath in, trying to anchor himself, but the pain in his lower belly has evened out into a dull tingle. Once his vision stops swaying at the sides, Hide takes a tentative glance downwards, where a mess of quivering muscle-like substance is expanding on his stomach, RC cells sealing his wound shut and blending with his skin.

“You’re not going to break this soon, that I can promise you,” Takatsuki says with glee. “I grew rather fond of this toy of mine!” she says with confusing sincerity, right before closing the distance and pressing a soft kiss to Hide’s bloodied lips with her own ecstatic ones.

Hide freezes, his brain short-circuiting with endless possibilities, trying to make sense of that feeling he saw in her irises right before she got closer, while his body aches for him to reach forward and _attack_ , struggle against this situation, _do something_ –

“You’re very valuable to me,” she confesses with a sort of twisted fondness shining in her soulless eyes. Hide must be wearing an expression of absolute shock, because she smiles again, tilting her head. “I can tell you don’t trust me. Of course you don’t. But I wasn’t the one who threw you aside and forgot everything about you,” she says in a cruel tone, patting his head once.

He doesn’t fully feel the sting those words were meant to have, used to their truth, and instead desperately tries to follow the rapid spinning of his thoughts. “What–” he gasps, “What did you do to me? What is that?”

“I made you stronger,” she replies plainly. “You and I are alike, Hide,” she muses, her gaze downcast and elsewhere. “I know better than anyone how it feels like to be discarded without a second thought.”

Hide doesn’t say anything.

He is still silently staring at a wall long after she leaves, thoughts in a whirr.

 

***

 

He hasn’t missed the vulnerability that has suddenly sprung in those distant pupils and the hard curve of her mouth, as she’s said those words.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Hide declares out loud to no one in particular later that night, still pinned to the wall and with the thought of his unsated hunger clawing at the dark recesses of his mind.

 _But maybe I know something about you now_ , he mentally adds.

 

***

 

It’s only what feels like days, months, or even hours later, when he wakes up from a nightmare with that child’s wails still ringing in his hears, that he realizes. His hunger is still twisting his very being into an animalistic figure with drool dripping from his mouth onto his exposed belly, and he can no longer fight against it.

He needs sustenance, or else his body is never going to hold up against the foreign body growing on his stomach.

***

It is not long after that that she slips back into Hide’s room, soft steps carrying her weight and making her almost go unnoticed again. He feels instantly wary, and follows her every move with his eyes, trying not to let his guard down.

“How are you holding up?” she purrs as soon as she gets in his space, as per usual. She doesn’t wait for a reply, not that Hide would give her any, before reaching to one of her wrists and slowly unwrapping a long bandage from her arm. “You’ve been so quiet…”

Hide feels tongue-tied as he looks in horror at the amusement clearly shining in her eyes.

He doesn’t know what she’s planning on doing, but it can’t be any good. It’s never good. Hide has learned not to trust those sly eyes. It doesn’t help that he never gets a read of them, and not knowing what to expect makes him impossibly antsy.

Her visits are the only notable events during his forced permanence in that squalid room.

He hates that waiting endlessly in that solitary confinement for something to happen and change the maddening monotony of those unfeeling white walls has made him crave for any distraction beside the constant threat of mental instability; he hates that he has no ways to measure time in the outside world beside his own heartbeat, because in here it feels like time stretches on and on, endless and pointless; but most of all, he hates that he craves company, because the only companion he can ever get during his captivity is the only person that makes him wish to remain alone forever, because even insanity is a much better companion than fear.

But it’s fear, only fear that knocks on his door today.

She slowly wraps the bandages over his eyes, making sure no slivers of light can slip in. Then, she gives him another kiss and leaves him again.

Complete darkness, he finds, is a much scarier companion than fear, because it leaves him alone with his thoughts.

 

***

 

With his thoughts, come the nightmares.

With the nightmares, come the trembling and the mind-numbing terror once he wakes up, opening his eyes to find even more darkness, one he cannot wake up from.

 

***

 

One day he wakes up from the darkness to find the room suddenly filled with the smell of fresh meat.

It’s overwhelming, because it comes from every direction at once, and he hates that he cannot see, that he cannot pick which one is the right one, and which one is a trick of his mind. It’s torture, because no matter how much he struggles, the kagune chains holding him in place won’t budge.

Food is right there, filling his nose with its tantalizing sweetness, making his stomach growl and his mind short-circuit with the possibility of ending his misery, but–

He cannot reach for it, and that makes his misery so much stronger.

 

***

 

After a while, he finds himself trapped in a pattern.

He doesn’t want to fall unconscious because he fears what waits for him there, but he doesn’t want to stay up either, because sensory deprivation soon evolved into paranoia and hallucinations, when he ended up doubting the accuracy of the information supplied by his still functioning senses. And so he unwillingly falls into an exhausted sleep, tired from fighting the waking hours and the demon of loneliness that seems so much more unbearable when you’re alone in an hostile environment, and so much more cruel when the only memory of a friend you have left is that of a starved monster with white hair and clothes tinted red digging his teeth into your flesh.

Hide has wondered more than once, if he’s still glad that he’s survived his infection. The answer comes one night, when he dreams the wailing child again, and this time manages to get close enough to see them.

Dream-Hide crouches down, and gently, tentatively removes their arms from their crying face, getting a glimpse of their face.

His own face glances back at him, its eyes nowhere in sight, and in their place dull, empty sockets. Their mouth is covered in drool, when they say:

“ _I am so lonely._ ”

 

Hide wakes up screaming.

 

***

 

“Let me out,” he screams one day.

His walls stare back at him, unseen.

“Let me out, please!”

No one replies.

He is alone.

 

***

 

The next time the ghoul comes by, it takes him by surprise. He’s still immersed in a state between wakefulness and sleep, and his senses are dulled by thousands upon thousands worth of heartbeats of numbing stillness.

He jerks awake when her hand caresses his face. “It’s almost time,” she says, then she reaches behind him to remove his bandages.

He’s suddenly blinded by the amount of light that hurts his eyes, and closes them with a wince.

“Don’t do that,” she commands, taking his chin in her hand, “I want to see your eyes.”

He slowly opens them, bearing the sting.

“That’s better. I have missed you,” she softly says, sounding sincere, and wraps her arms around him, carding her fingers through Hide’s hair. It’s getting quite long.

Hide wants to hate the relief he feels flooding through his touch-starved body at the close proximity of another body. He really wants to, but he shuts down that insistent part of his brain because a bigger part is currently basking in it, and he doesn’t even remember why it is supposed to be a bad thing, when it eases the sharp pang of loneliness in his chest.

“You’ve been such a good boy,” she coos, disentangling herself from him and giving him a fond look. Hide already misses the warmth of that human touch, but quickly forgets it when his nostrils are suddenly attacked by a delicious smell coming somewhere to her right. He jerks his head in that direction, smelling the air.

“You brought me food?” he shakily asks, and gulps. Suddenly, his stomach is rumbling again.

Takatsuki giggles. “Didn’t I tell you? I never wanted to see you suffer, Hide.” She uses her kagune to free him from his confines.

Hide stills, waiting for a catch that doesn’t come, his mind in a haze and his mouth already watering from the promise of food. He doesn’t take a step forward, despite every instinct in him practically screaming for him to.

“Eat,” she prompts when a few moments pass by without him doing much of anything beside looking at the meat like a trapped animal.

He realizes that there has to be a catch in this. Something will change depending on what he does now, but his mind is too foggy for him to catch on to it, his hunger too past the point of submission. And so, when she nudges him forward, he obeys.

He sinks his teeth into his first meal as a ghoul, and the fog doesn’t dissipate even after that.

Eto giggles.

“I love you,” she says.

Hide believes her.

 

***

 

That night, no nightmares come anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my tumblr [here](http://bloodycarnations.tumblr.com/post/155595823204/oh-my-could-you-write-another-eto-hide) in honour of my two-years anniversary in this fandom.  
> Feel free to come to my askbox and comment on this fic or talk tokyo ghoul to me. Don't let this fic fool you. I'm actually a nice person. (Most of the time).


End file.
